Even with ARIN At Last /8, Path Forward in IPv4-IPv6 Transition Remains Unclear

Published 5:14 AM ET Thu, 1 May 2014
Globe Newswire

WASHINGTON, May 1, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On April 23, ARIN announced that it had reached its final /8 of IPv4 addresses and had moved into Phase Four of its IPv4 Countdown Plan. While this news is certain to have caught the attention of ISPs, CDN, and cloud infrastructure providers, it should not be cause for alarm yet. Some, such as Scott Hogg of Global Technology Resources, Inc. warn that "Over time, the price of an IPv4 address will increase from $15 to $30 today to well over $100 in the not-so-distant future" and stress the importance of actively planning to adopt IPv6.

Others suggest the transition has proven to be a hard issue to force. Louis Sterchi, Director at Kalorama Group, remarked that "Even with the exhaustion in North America imminent and finally tangible conceptually, don't expect the sky to start falling quite yet."

"The flurry of activity by technology enterprises will not ensue until one of the incumbent cloud providers spends nine figures on a single IPv4 transaction, and it is quite hard to predict when that will happen," Sterchi said.

In the meantime, ironically, the very success of the Internet might be inhibiting the movement from IPv4 to IPv6 due to network effects and the maturation of IPv4 and NAT in the networks. While IPv6 is increasingly a part of enterprises' calculus, as has been the case in Europe, where free space has been exhausted for 18 months, it has not been prioritized by decision makers to-date.

For more news and insights on the world of IPv4 and IPv6, visit the Kalorama blog.